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Monday, 19 November 2012

AgriProtein will be on SABC2 tomorrow morning at 05.30 - in their AgriTV programme.

Popular daily agricultural television programmes AgriTV and Ulimo have joined forces in 2008 to form one dynamic television programme - Agriculture Today. This programme includes aspects from both shows and will focusses on educating and informing all farmers.
You may want to record it!

Sunday, 18 November 2012

OUR GLOBAL food system is falling to pieces, yet we have solutions all around us.
We take for granted the fact that we should recycle our glass, news- papers, tin, plastic and water. But this is only the tip of the iceberg.Click for Full Story

Thursday, 8 November 2012

Reading Matters - 8 Nov 2012 - Sue Grant-Marshall andJason Drew on his novel 'The Story of the Fly' (@AuthorJasonDrew). Sue talks to Jason Drew about 'The Story of the Fly and how it could save the world'. Reading Matters hosted by Sue Grant-Marshall is broadcast on Thursdays from 10h00 to 10h30 (GMT+2). Radio Today broadcasts on 1485 AM in Johannesburg and nationally on DStv Audio Channel 169. Radio Today also streams on its website www.1485.org.za and on cell phones on 1485.mobi. Radio Today! Radio that Delivers!

Our current thinking is
driven by an education system devised in the 17th century, systematised in the
19th century and rendered obsolete by the end of the industrial
revolution. We are now in a race between understanding and disaster. Let me
explain.

We are still teaching our children
to think like products of the industrial revolution when that era of human
development is over. Business schools still talk about win-win deals being the
way forward when we all know that in almost every industrial revolution business
deal there was a loser – the environment.

Life, we were
taught, is about managing predictable patterns of change. That may have been
true in our past but not any longer. Seemingly unpredictable change will become
ever more commonplace as our natural world is changed by humans at a remarkable
pace. Wining through the sustainability revolution is all about understanding
the connectivity between seemingly unrelated business and eco-systems. This new
thinking is what will determine the outcome of the revolution and indeed the 21st
century for humankind.

We talk about not being able
to see the wood for the trees. Never has a truer word been uttered about
today’s relationship between humankind and our planet. A wonderful example of
this is the story of how the wolf reforested Yellowstone National Park.

Hunters shot the last wolf in the park in the
1920s. The Aspen trees looked as beautiful as ever, but then in the 1980’s the
woods started disappearing at an alarming rate. The wolf was then re-introduced
to the Park from Canada and the trees came back.

The Aspen trees had matured and died as they do naturally–
and whilst everyone could see the trees they did not look at the woods. Once
the last wolf had been shot the Elk moved from the plains to the woods and
grazed on the young saplings – so no new trees were establishing themselves.

Since the re-introduction of the wolf in 1995,
the elk population has been reduced and their natural grazing habits have
returned. The Elk, frightened of the wolves, no longer graze at the river edges
or in woods but on the open plains. Young sapling aspen trees now survive and
as they mature the woodlands are naturally re-establishing themselves. That is
how the wolf helped reforest Yellowstone National Park!

As businesses
struggle to shift from the industrial revolution to the sustainability
revolution new industries are emerging and old ones dying off. Companies like AgriProtein that recycle
abattoir waste using fly larvae into sustainable feed for chicken and fish will
devastate fishmeal producers and thereby help save our seas. Companies like
Oxitec with their sterile insect programs will also, I hope, put traditional
pesticide manufacturers out of business. These and many other sustainability
revolution industries are blowing away industrial revolution businesses that
have not adapted to the new world.

Businesses are
desperate to attract talent that can think differently – and take away the ‘boxes’
that our educational system puts in our thinking. We need to get back closer to
nature and understanding how we can define our future in terms of those
ecosystems rather than trying to change ecosystems to fit our vision of the
future.

We have to stop teaching
and thinking linearly, like the machines that defined our experience of the
Industrial revolution – and start thinking in systems and interconnectedness between
business, human existence and nature. We need to teach our children and learn
for ourselves 21st century values, and reset our goals and ambitions
that were based on the unrealistic thinking of the past.

In any fight with
nature mankind will loose – so we need to give up struggling and start
understanding.